I guess you could say I was a weird kid. I went through a lot of obsessions in my early

life, phases where I would become obsessed with a topic for a couple of months and learn

everything I possibly could about it until I never to police something else would catch

my attention and I would move on. When I was around 10 years old and a school

book fair, a book with a large ship on its cover caught my eye. After glancing over the

first few pages, I decided I would use a ten dollars my parents had given me to spend

the fair on one single book. Reading it would cement my fanatical interest in the ship

that decorated the cover, the Titanic.

Over the next couple of months, I would devour and be able to regurgitate from memory countless

facts about the ship, from the time it was being built in Belfast to its untimely sinking

in the North Atlantic that April night in 1912. I even managed to successfully annoy

my parents into renting the huge blockbuster hit that had come out about it just a few

years prior and letting me watch it, albeit with them skipping over some scenes.

Time moved on and eventually I found a new topic to occupy my interest and I largely forgot

about the Titanic. Although to this day I do still remember several facts which once even

came in handy at a happy hour trivia night when I was in school for my PhD. I did eventually

grow up and become a far less obsessive person, finding just one interest to occupy my time

and eventually blossom into my career. Microbiology.

I had studied it in college and decided to go to graduate school for it and I am currently

a professor at a relatively impressive private university, which I will leave nameless for

privacy's sake and I am able to pursue my passion with the relatively light compromise

of having to lecture often hungover students about basic microbiology.

...